Up Off the Tarmac

Well, here we go. On Page 1 of this issue, you can read about a meeting planned by the United Church of Christ in Honolulu that has been canceled because of increases in the cost of airline tickets since the religious group booked the meeting in 2006.

I know the biennial Synod of the United Church of Christ is not on a scale with Intl. CES or the New York Intl. Gift Fair, but it could be a harbinger of things to come.

One more thing to chew on: Officials at Las Vegas' McCarran Intl. Airport announced that passenger traffic in August was down 9.9 percent, compared with the same month last year. It was the 10th consecutive month that passenger traffic into Las Vegas decreased.

All this is likely to get worse because you can be sure that, as companies begin to draw up their 2009 budgets, travel expenses will be scrutinized in a way they never have before.

Optimistic show managers are falling back on the “it's not the quantity, it's the quality of the attendee” mantra. Let's hope they're right. Nevertheless, the tradeshow industry cannot pretend there is nothing wrong and that exhibitors will continue to buy space at shows even if fewer potential attendees can afford to get to them.

At a town hall meeting conducted by the Society of Independent Show Organizers during the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Intl.'s Affordable Meetings Natl. held Sept. 10-11 in Washington, D.C., Consumer Electronics Assn. President and CEO Gary Shapiro had some suggestions, most of which had airlines coming up with other ways of generating revenue and adding to their bottom lines that were a bit more imaginative than simply raising ticket prices and cutting flights.

Here are a few of Shapiro's suggestions:

• Airlines go crazy with sponsorships (much in the way tradeshow organizers have begun to). Every airline fuselage is a blank canvas.

• Reverse the current system that has leisure travelers who make their reservations well in advance of their departures paying less than business travelers who often must make their travel plans at the last minute and pay more. Why not, he wondered, privilege those business travelers who are the airlines' bread and butter by allowing them to pay less as it gets closer to flight time?

• Airlines develop some kind of profit-sharing arrangement with airport vendors who have benefited in recent years from the fact that travelers now arrive at airports much earlier and spend more money with them.

These three suggestions are so novel there is the temptation to not take them seriously. However, it is clear somebody is going to have to do something heretofore unheard of if business people are to continue traveling to your shows.

Those aren't the only suggestions that will come up. Tradeshow Week is even getting into the brainstorming act. During the executive-level conference portion of our TSW Fastest 50 weekend Nov. 7-9 in Baltimore, Senior Editor Rachel Wimberly will moderate a discussion on the airline conundrum that will include:

• Bruce Bommarito, executive vice president and COO of the Travel Industry Assn. and general manager of the association's annual tradeshow, Intl. Pow Wow

• Jerome Greer Chandler, contributing editor focusing on the airline industry for Business Travel Executive magazine, and

• Tom Cindric, Hanley Wood Exhibitions director and manager of World of Concrete, a show that routinely flies nearly 100,000 participants to Las Vegas every year.

Now is not the time to hide your head in the sand on this issue.

Michael Hart is editor-in-chief of Tradeshow Week. He can be reached at hartm@reedbusiness.com.